


Drawing Hearts in the Margins

by MysteriouslyNotNamed0_0



Category: Adventure Time
Genre: Gen, M/M, Sibling Incest, clone incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25377253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MysteriouslyNotNamed0_0/pseuds/MysteriouslyNotNamed0_0
Summary: When you're used to writing angry, rebellious things, it's probably a bad sign when you suddenly find yourself writing lighthearted, bubbly ones, right? Right.
Relationships: Earl of Lemongrab/Earl of Lemongrab
Kudos: 5





	Drawing Hearts in the Margins

**Author's Note:**

> this is kinda silly and rambly, but, whatever, i still think it's cute and i have Lots Of Emotions about lemongrab's band (which, if youre wondering, it's from one of the mobile games, and i am pretty sure it was in a few of the comics too :P canon is weirder than fanfic sometimes!)

Lemongrab stopped short in the doorway to the throne room. "You cannot possibly be comfortable like that," he said.

His elder brother was hunched sideways in his throne, folded around a thick notebook, his limbs sticking out in awkward directions. "Oh," he said, "I'm sorry. Should I move? Were you planning to stay long and find my position increasingly uncomfortable to watch?" His voice was positively dropping with sarcasm, and internally, he berated himself for that. "I'll move if you want me to, that's juuuuust peachy with me, I was sitting here BECAUSE it was uncomfortable. Obviously. I'll move."

"No, no, no." The youngest of the two smiled. "It was just a passing observation, and I'm on my way out to pick up the mail." He waved his hand at his brother as he turned to leave. "Stay if it's comfortable, I'll see you soon."

Lemongrab smiled tightly at the back of his brother's head. "See you."

As soon as he heard the outer door close, he curled back up around his notebook. This position wasn't particularly comfortable, truly, but he wanted to sit like this anyways and he wasn't sure why. This was how Ash always sat when he was moping. Maybe that was it. Regardless, his knees did make a good prop for writing on.

Lemongrab flipped idly through the notebook while he thought. The first couple of pages were filled with painfully scattered looking thoughts. It was hard to read, the pencil had torn through the paper so many times, and he hadn't adhered to the given lines. Most of it was filled with hate aimed at the world, some of it was actually just disguised fear, peppered with day-to-day to-do lists that had been crossed out, where they were even readable. A few pages were just filled with dark cross hatching and zigzags to the point that they were almost solid black.

Then, slowly, the good stuff started. Still dark, still torn in places, but coherent. Words that actually translated into feelings. Quick, light bars with musical notes drawn on them. The to-do lists weren't as frequent, and they were shorter and simpler. He still drew zigzags and cross hatches, but they were mostly confined to the margins. The lines were followed, for the most part. The feelings were still genuine, even if he wasn't writing them down in frustration and hating them as he wrote, scribbling them out as he went.

He hated to admit that joining a band had been good for him. Even more, he hated that his bandmates could tell.

But here he was, months later, a relatively successful singer in a small-name band with this giant notebook of lyrics in his lap. He tried not to think about it too much, lest he begin hating the stereotypical adolescent he was acting like. 

The most recent pages had been scratchier and messier than usual, and that was what scared him. He could admit that. That was why he was feeling so touchy today, and why he was holed up alone in the throne room. To try and think about this situation. 

It didn't seem great. He could run his finger over the page and feel the ridges where he'd dug his pencil in, and he remembered he had been trying so hard not to because that meant he was mad and he didn't want to be mad. He didn't want to be mad. There was no reason to be mad now.

There were also hearts drawn into the margins, and that scared him, too. Hearts with his name - his new friend's name - in them, or their identical names next to each other with swirling, intertwined underscores. And over the past few days, the tone of his lyrics were changing quite a bit from what they were before. Before, it had always been about fear. Even when it wasn't, even when someone else wrote the words, he sang it, and all he knew was how to be terrified, so he sang that. 

It came out as anger, usually. Or at least it sounded like that. Anger at the world. Anger at his family. Fear because they never told him why they left him. Fear that he couldn't fix it. Fear that it would drive everyone else away, too. And that was very well and good for the other band members, too, who were all upset in their own ways and screamed their hearts into the microphones beside him and sobbed and hurt and understood him, in their own way. They were part of a metal band and metal bands scream about unfairness and pain. No one heard the lyrics and thought there was something wrong with the singers, only that the words struck a chord in them and made them want to scream and wave their hands too. It was a great thing, to be able to say that you don't belong and just want to not exist, and to not be taken aside and told it wasn't appropriate. It was, instead, what the band was known for, it was what Lemongrab and Ash and Tiffany and even Muscle Princess and Tree Witch were very good at writing, and it was good. It was their brand. Right?

Lemongrab turned the page slowly and read the things he had jotted down earlier that day. 

This doesn't fit our brand at all, he thought. Hearts and swirls and flowers? No no no no no. And the lyrics were even worse. Happy, sunshine, darling. But he put his pencil to the paper and scribbled out a few more words and licked his lips nervously. Miracle, good, wonderful.

There was no tune yet, and it was all just words that made him think of his brother with a sick sort of feeling in his stomach and a flutter in his heart, but he couldn't help feeling deeply embarrassed about the whole thing. Something in him wanted to tear out the last few pages and burn them, but the last time he'd yanked out a page and torn it to shreds, he'd regretted it. Mostly because Muscle Princess convinced him it was worth regretting. And that was mostly because she was a softhearted romantic and believed all his words deserved to be heard, even if, upon writing them out, he hated them with all his heart and wanted them dead. 

She'd had such a Look in her eyes when she sat him down and told him this, that from then on he'd kept all his awful lyrics in this notebook. He was sure to make a notation beside the ones that were really bad, however, so he'd know later that he had never thought such trash was good. It saved him from late-arrival embarrassment. So he folded his hand and moved it away from the page so that the temptation to tear up these mushy pages was gone. 

He put his hand to his mouth and tried writing again. And his pencil didn't stop moving until a solid dozen pages were filled (he counted, and wrote the number in the margins alongside derogatory comments on how much paper he'd wasted gushing about his brother and his feelings). 

He skimmed back over all the happy things he had written since his brother came into his life, and shook his head gravely. This really was serious.

No one was allowed to read the notebook but him, which was an unspoken rule that was understood among his bandmates. Two of the others had their own notebooks with the same rule. Tiffany let everyone read his notebook, even encouraged it, but Lemongrab felt like it was spying, somehow, and usually only gave it a glance at most. If a song started to work out well, it was moved to communal papers anyone could read.

Regardless of all this, it was really a very chill band. They all appeared in someone or other's house, they ate and talked and yelled at each other, and eventually a song or two appeared. Sometimes they had gigs, usually they just found their way to dark clubs with an open slot and jumped in. Their small following was loud and excitable. The people who didn't follow them but occasionally heard an act said they were better than expected but nothing special. Lemongrab couldn't ask for more, even if Ash got mad and threatened to ditch them for a better band every few weeks despite being the person most invested in the band's success.

Lemongrab had hated it more than anything when Ash first dropped by, long ago, and insisted he join his new band. Ash explained that he had just broken up with his girlfriend and was absolutely crushed and needed to let his anger out in a productive way, so he was starting a band. This seemed all very well and reasonable to Lemongrab, but, respectfully, he wasn't going to be dressing in silly clothes and marching about on stage doing ridiculous things in front of strange people, thank you very much.

Somehow he ended up as lead singer. But he hated it he hated it and nothing was really working until Muscle Princess came over to him one day, shoved a thick green notebook into his hands, and told him to write down everything. Anything at all, everything he thought about, everything he didn't know how to say.

He hated that, too, because it was very painful to try and make his thoughts come out onto a paper, so he tore pages and screamed audibly as he was trying to describe in writing just how much it hurt and just how frustrated he was that no one would explain anything to him. It got easier in time, and he actually began to rather enjoy it. 

But he kept his pain vague on the page, because he didn't want his mother ever finding this and seeing in pen how much he hated her loved her hated her loved her, so he ended up becoming one of the main lyricists. The words were more broadly applicable than the ones everyone else wrote. Ash only moped about girls in his lyrics. Tiffany just wrote overly complicated similes about... well, Lemongrab never quite understood, but Tree Witch seemed to, as did Ash. Muscle Princess admitted she was mostly here because she liked playing drums, and the lyrics she did provide were sweet and puppy-lovey.

But she also knew things, like how she had known that this notebook idea was going to help Lemongrab find some kind of outlet. So Lemongrab ran off (with a brief "I'll be back, don't wait up," to his brother) and did the same thing she had done that day she first gave it to him; he threw her palace door open and shoved his notebook into her hands. "Muscle Princess this is starting to sound like half the songs you write and so I think I'm dying," he said in a rush and opened it to the last few pages for her. "You better quick check and make sure, because you'd probably know, wouldn't you? If this is bad? Oh who am I kidding, this is so bad. I think I'm dying, oh glob."

She read it all through very patiently, then looked up and smiled that gooey, sincere smile she always had when a cute fan sidled up to her after a performance. "Oh, glob, Lemongrab. You know what this is?"

He stopped gnawing on dead skin around his nails to answer. "It's _this_ close to getting thrown in my fireplace, is what it is."

She shook her head. "No, Lemongrab, I think you're in love!"

"I am not," he snapped. "How dare you."

Muscle Princess just raised a knowing eyebrow at him, and that was all he needed. Heat rushed up into his face and he covered his mouth. "Oh, glob," he whispered. "I'm in love?"

"Yuh-huh, I think so!" she singsonged. She stood up and threw an arm around his shoulder, still grinning ear to ear. "Lucky you!"

"Lucky me??" Lemongrab squawked. "I feel like I'm dying still!"

Muscle Princess managed to reassure him that he was certainly not dying ("And if you still feel like that in a few days, that's something you can make into lyrics, too!") and that he could deal with this at his own pace, and she sent him home with some flowers she happened to have sitting by her throne for him to give to his new friend.

His friend was overjoyed at the bouquet, and Lemongrab felt all hot and nervous again, so that night he ended up writing six more pages of happy, lovey words, and that made him feel better. And when he realized how happy his brother would be to find out that Lemongrab had written entire songs for him, and was going to sing them for other people, well, he felt absolutely lovely.


End file.
